The Maestro of the instruments August 2, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , trackbackONE major advance of the Austin Maestro is often overlooked. Its fibre-optic instrument needle pointers.
Yes, indeedy.
See, in the olden days, cars used to have dials lit by a bulb drilled in the top of the dashboard. If, that is, they were lucky.
In time, makers such as Smiths integrated this into the dial itself, so the outside ring lit up. Very swish. But it was still somewhat coal-hole like in the dark.
Then, a few crazy car makers began to bedazzle awe-struck eyes like mine, with gorgeous backlit panels. These had all the lights behind the instrument face, with the numerals picked out in transparent plastic. The light shone through, as if the Lord himself had taken an interest, transforming night-time legibility.
But still the needles were just dumb sticks.
Enter the Maestro. And its fibre-optic instrument needle pointers.
How the motoring world today lives and breathes on these. Its influence is everywhere. It is the reason why the MkIV Golf got mouthwatering blue dials with red pointers. It’s how Volkswagen Group is able to differentiate stock instrument panels across different brands. It’s how Jaguar can refer to ‘Phosphorous Blue’ dial lighting in press info for the XF.
What is it? Well, just that. A fibre-optic, opaque-plastic needle. At night, light would shoot up it, bringing daylight to the entire needle. Like some sort of miraculous light sabre, it was Star Wars before your very eyes. It was why my Granddad had endless flat batteries on his Maestro Vanden Plas in winter.
Austin-Rover was dialling in a revolution here. How we should thus praise the majesty of the miraculous, mighty Maestro.
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